Quake 2 is a First Person Shooter in where humanity finds itself fighting a losing war against a cybernetic alien race known as the Strogg and stage a last-ditch invasion on their homeworld in order to wipe them out. For those wondering what any of this has to do with the Lovecraftian plot of the first, that would be absolutely nothing. This game wasn’t even intended to be Quake’s sequel which helps explain the massive departure of tone from abstract horror, to in your face heavy metal. History lesson aside, Earth’s invasion quickly takes a turn for the worse and most of our fleet is immediately decimated while the Marines crash land far from their goal points. You are one such Marine, simply known as Bitterman, whose pod has crashed straight into a building and finds himself deep in enemy territory with nothing but a pistol in hand.
It breaks away from the series awesome tradition of having a hub-world to choose your difficulty and is now merely selected from a menu. Episodes have been done away with as well, and the entire game plays in one long, uninterrupted stretch from beginning to end. It is much like Doom 2 in that respect, not to mention the weaponry to be found here is mostly lifted from that series as well. You have your starting pistol, two types of shotguns, a chaingun, and even the BFG. They have had some tweaks to make it feel like their own thing, like the pistol having a slow-moving projectile when fired and the chaingun being far less ammo efficient. Honestly, your arsenal feels uninspired yet it still manages to have better gunplay than its predecessor. That is mostly due to the fact you’ll now be mainly facing humanoid enemies who go down faster, but in turn, can dodge your projectiles and may not die outright with your gunfire. In that wounded state, they fall to the ground yet still use the last of their strength to take potshots at you before they ultimately bleed out or you put them out of their misery.
Combat feels far more organic than the last game’s monsters whose strategy was to run at you until either you or they died. What really seals the deal is the ludicrous amounts of gibbing that will occur against our fleshy, humanoid foes. If you want to make sure they don’t get back up, run up to them and fire your super shotgun to turn them into pasty, red mush. Or if you just want to spite them, shooting their corpses will also cause them to gib. Fun to be had all around, though they are not giving humanity quite a beating out of luck, get too cocky and they will likely make you regret it. Many of your foes do look similar but learning how to quickly spot what type they are and their attack patterns will be vital. As an example, let’s talk about the simple Gunner whose most apparent difference is a red stripes on his right gun. If he lifts that arm that means he’s winding for a machinegun burst, meanwhile if he raises his left arm, you may want to get away as fast as possible to avoid his consecutive grenades. With enemies having so much variance, being able to avoid fire, and downing them doesn’t always take them out of the fight, there are a ton of possibles in any situation which really helps keep any sense of repetition at bay.
At times, you may even encounter some friendly troops that have been driven mad via torture. They are entirely unimportant to the mission or any objectives but do give you a moral dilemma in whether to leave them to their suffering or ending their lives to reap the occasional ammo they drop. Either way one doesn’t feel like a hero and is the one thing that gives this title a sinister vibe to it instead of pure gun touting action. Minus the red skies, this alien planet doesn’t feel all that foreign with its mostly military complex architecture. Where it really excels at is how we navigate it and the options at your disposal. We can now crouch at will to squeeze through tight spaces, climb ladders and blow chunks out of certain areas of the environment to progress. In addition, the goal is no longer to make it to the end of the level. You now have specific objectives to complete and occasionally they will have you backtracking through older areas, giving it the feel of a grand adventure instead of a bunch of levels loosely connected to one another.
The level design is very good and you will rarely have to press F1 to see what your mission was or what you need to do since they do a stellar job of guiding you. Once an area has nothing vital to be done in it, the music will stop to let you know and be on your way. This leads me to a massive strike against the game in its current state. Bethesda/ID Software took the soundtrack out of all older Quake titles. It is even more damning here considering it has an entirely different ambiance from the original, where the creepy vibe is arguably made stronger without its music, but that is not the case with Quake 2 with its sci-fi setting. Not only is the soundtrack tied to the gameplay this time, but it is also one of the finest to have ever graced the gaming industry, especially if you like Metal. I strongly urge you to patch it back in if you decide to give this title a try as playing without it is akin to taking your significant other to a fancy restaurant and ordering nothing but water.
Scattered around the stages and hidden a significant portion of the times are the powerups. They are far more varied than before featuring awesome gadgets like activatable Energy Armor or a skull that temporarily turns you invincible. Every item can be carried around making them far more useful than before when you’d enter a room, kill everybody and promptly facepalm when you notice the Quad-Damage pickup. It also lends it a bit more strategy than going in and shooting up the place as you make use of them the best you can throughout your 8-hour journey across enemy territory. Not only are there a wide range of aliens all too eager to shoot you, but you will also have to deal with traps and hazards. They can range from lasers, platforms to vault over, or just plain giving you another reason to fear water with the barracuda sharks that lurk within. The focus is still mainly on fighting, so they are mostly just nice distractions instead of a common occurrence.
Having actual objectives to complete really helps give a sense of progression and scale to the war. From disabling their communications to destroying their means of production, it always feels like you are doing something meaningful and have a reason to strive forward aside from shooting some more dudes. Much like the rest of ID’s titles however, there isn’t much story to be found, and most of what is there is told via the manual. With all that being said, even if Quake 2 wasn’t originally intended to be part of the series it has definitely earned its place into the legendary franchise. Being 20 years old, stuff like the graphics and at times destructible environments is obviously nothing to write home about in this day and age. What is timeless however, is the breakneck gameplay alongside its stellar level design that perfectly blends them into something you’ll find yourself struggling to stop playing. It is unfortunate that its integral soundtrack has been ripped out and that the player has to go out of their way to put them back in, but for those willing to do so, they’ll soon find that Quake 2 isn’t a game elevated into legend via nostalgia alone.
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